JOBY MARTIN | Stand Firm and Act Like Men (Ep. 823)

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0:30 [MUSIC]

0:50 This is Undaunted Life, a Man's Podcast.

0:54 I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.

0:57 It will be Martin, welcome to your church.

1:00 It is our church, but yeah, I know what you mean.

1:03 This is your church and I go to your church when I'm here, right?

1:05 That's how we're supposed to talk about it when we're at it on 22.

1:07 It's not, it's ultimately Jesus's church, but if I'm here and you're here, it's our church.

1:10 It's just semantics.

1:11 Here we are at your church and we are in your studio, your podcast studio.

1:14 I feel the power.

1:15 Is this your chair that you normally send?

1:17 No, I sit right here.

1:18 That's a Brit.

1:19 Pastor Brit.

1:20 Oh, this is Pastor Brit's chair.

1:21 Do I have to say smart things out of my face holding entire time now?

1:23 Yeah.

1:24 All right, I'm not really prepared for that, but what I am prepared for.

1:26 Landon studio.

1:27 Landon?

1:28 Yeah.

1:29 Landon, do you have a mic back there?

1:30 Are you like Jamie from the, from Joe Rogan?

1:32 Are you going to say something?

1:33 Landon, we should get Landon out here at some point.

1:36 Landon, you want to come out here and show your face?

1:38 Because I keep talking to Landon like he's there.

1:40 I don't know.

1:41 And then no one ever knows that he's real.

1:42 It's kind of like I have a girlfriend.

1:43 She just goes to a different school, right?

1:44 So you're like our girlfriend.

1:45 Landon is what we're saying.

1:46 By the way, he's sweating right now.

1:47 I know it.

1:48 His biggest fear is that we've been making him come out here and do something.

1:51 Landon, I refuse to ask a question until you come out here and say hi to the people.

1:56 Landon, he says he's waving from there, but guys, this is a great day.

2:02 I've been looking forward to this day for a while because this book right here, Stan Ferm,

2:06 an act like men by Joe B. Martin, Charles Martin, not related, becoming the man you were created

2:11 to be instead of who the world says you are, I read this book on an airplane about five

2:16 months ago.

2:17 Okay.

2:18 Right.

2:19 So I've been sitting on my thoughts.

2:20 Okay.

2:21 My questions for a substantial period of time is driving me absolutely insane.

2:24 So we got to get all this.

2:25 We got to release the pressure, but I do want to start with the book dedication.

2:28 So the book dedication, right, which by the way, guys, if you are just listening to this

2:31 on time, this is coming out the day the book is out.

2:34 So you can go to Amazon, you can go to your favorite bookstore and whatever.

2:37 You can buy this book.

2:38 You should definitely check it out.

2:39 Here's the book dedication.

2:41 I dedicate this to the men that have shown me how to stand firm and act like a man.

2:46 Thank you, daddy, Lars, Bill, coach, Bull and Jerry.

2:50 So just very quickly, because we don't have time and we get to spend the rest of the time

2:54 talking about those five men, but why those five men?

2:57 Well, first, my dad, every probably pretty obvious bill Ross is the guy that hired me

3:02 right out of seminary.

3:03 And he showed me how to be a pastor without sacrificing your family coach, bully, led me

3:09 to Christ.

3:10 Pastor Jerry sweat really discipled me.

3:12 I worked under him for 10 years.

3:14 And he's the pastor that launched me and launched the church of 11 22.

3:18 So I had deep admiration for all those men.

3:20 And I think what's great about what you're talking about with those men is there's a

3:23 legacy of anointing.

3:25 There's a legacy of leadership.

3:26 There's a legacy of discipleship.

3:29 And so that's something that comes through in the book as well, because, you know, some

3:32 men they like to gather up wisdom and they kind of keep it all for themselves.

3:35 It's like, what is this stoic?

3:37 I'm going to sit by the lake and think about all things I've learned thing.

3:40 Like if you're not pouring that into other people, like what's the entire point?

3:43 And so I guess let's just start with, you know, you waited a long time to write your

3:49 first book.

3:50 If the tomb is empty, right?

3:52 And then you go to anything as possible run over by the grace train, which at first I

3:56 was very concerned because apparently I didn't do well in English.

3:58 I was like, is it not ran over by the grace train?

4:00 So I'm still trying to figure out if it's correct or incorrect.

4:03 But then, you know, fourth book in, we're going to a manhood book.

4:06 And so you know the drill, why this book?

4:08 Why now?

4:09 Why you?

4:10 You know, by the time a book comes out, it's been a couple of years in the making.

4:13 And it just, dude, you, you, this is the area you breathe.

4:17 What are you?

4:18 You swim in?

4:19 We have a manhood crisis.

4:21 Yeah.

4:22 And so I wanted to write a book.

4:23 Listen, there's so many good men's books that really are, but most of them are written

4:27 by very, very smart, well, not most of them.

4:29 Many of the good books are written by a very smart people that know psychology and sociology.

4:36 Okay, whatever.

4:38 But most of them are like here 10 ideas for me on how you can be a better man, okay?

4:45 This book is just, what does the Bible say?

4:48 Because that's what I'm just a Bible person.

4:50 And so 1 Corinthians 16, 13 and 14, very simply say, be watchful, stay in verminified, act

4:56 like men, be strong, let all you do be done in love.

4:58 The way I see it is like act like men is the hub in the middle of the wheel, the imperatives

5:02 around it are how we are to act like that.

5:04 There's basically a chapter only into one of those things.

5:07 And it's not necessarily just, here's what I think or here's my preferences.

5:12 This is what the Bible says it means to be the man God has called you to be.

5:16 That's the book.

5:17 And then the other focus, there was a scripture dedication as well of Ephesians 6, 13 and

5:22 14.

5:23 This is how I'm very familiar.

5:24 Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil

5:26 day and having done all to stand firm, stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of

5:30 truth, having put on the breast, pray of righteousness, so on and so forth, so on and so forth.

5:35 And so you really, really do that.

5:37 And Matt Carter had a fantastic forward.

5:39 I just want to read a quote from the forward real quick.

5:41 As I write these words, I've recently crossed into my 51st year of living on this planet.

5:46 After those years, I've become increasingly convinced that the lack of genuine big key

5:50 there, biblical manhood is rooted is the root of the overwhelming majority of society's

5:55 problems.

5:56 So very important words here, genuine, biblical manhood, right?

6:00 Correct.

6:01 And we've talked about this before, so we don't need to belabor it because I got a lot of things

6:05 I want to dig into.

6:06 But we both have said publicly and would cosign any statement saying, name a societal ill

6:12 and you could take it back to lack of genuine, biblically based manhood, because people like

6:17 talk about fatherlessness.

6:18 Well, if you're a rooted, biblically based, genuine man, you're not going to leave your

6:25 family.

6:26 Correct.

6:27 Right.

6:28 And so all these societal, societal ills go back, but I do need to come to someone's defense

6:31 here and you don't normally hear me defending people on this show, but you threw a guy under

6:35 the bus recently.

6:36 And so guys, if you're listening to Joby Martin interviews, he did an interview here recently

6:40 and he gave the guy some, some crap because he only asked questions from chapter one.

6:45 So I'm going to defend this poor podcaster and say that most of my questions are from

6:49 the intro in chapter one, right?

6:51 I read the whole thing.

6:52 I did read the whole thing, but most of my questions are coming from the early part of

6:55 the book.

6:56 But guys, that just means I'm going to leave some meat on the bone, right?

6:58 I don't know which landed, which camera am I supposed to look at?

7:00 Can you come out here and tell me landed, landed, which, oh, that one he just, he literally

7:06 just liked the Wizard of Oz just poked his hand out from behind the curtain there to point

7:09 at that camera.

7:10 So I'm looking at you.

7:11 You got to go get the book.

7:12 You got to go read the rest of the book because I'm apparently only able to ask questions

7:16 about the beginning, but can you start out by talking about when you almost died in a

7:21 river?

7:22 Yeah, it was so dumb.

7:23 I was, I was super young, like 19 or 20, and me and my buddy went canoeing, but what

7:27 we didn't take into account, like I'd been fishing a ton, but always with like a little

7:31 John boat, you know, with a motor.

7:34 And we only had one vehicle.

7:35 So we were just like, we'll be fine.

7:37 We could paddle upstream and then float back.

7:40 And then we got in the river and we're like, well, we can't paddle upstream, but surely

7:43 we can just float down for a little while.

7:45 And then we can just like hike the canoe back up.

7:48 Well, when we, how old are you at this time, by the way, like 19, sophomore and, okay.

7:52 Yeah, maybe sophomore in college, maybe 18, something like that.

7:56 And well, we go down a little ways, we're like, yeah, it's probably time to like hike

8:00 it back.

8:01 We're probably like a mile away or something.

8:02 We got this, right?

8:03 Well, when we turned, I got, I like went parallel to this downed log and the force of

8:10 the water just sucked the canoe right out of us in about two seconds.

8:14 And everything we had is gone.

8:16 Luckily, I had taken my truck keys and tied them into the drawstring of my umbros.

8:22 Yeah.

8:23 And so well, and then I go on to in the book, it's a pretty good metaphor of what the book

8:27 is.

8:28 I mean, we were screwed, man.

8:29 We were like, what are we going to do?

8:30 And so we're kind of hiking our way back to the truck.

8:32 And then we hear a motorboat coming upstream and it had all of our stuff.

8:37 This dude sees it.

8:39 He just sees like a yard sale.

8:40 He sees a cooler and he sees flip flops.

8:42 He sees, we weren't wearing life jackets, obviously.

8:45 He sees paddles and an upside down canoe.

8:47 He thought, well, these guys, they're dead.

8:49 Yeah.

8:50 And he gathers it all up.

8:51 And then in his wisdom, he, he gets us back.

8:54 This book, I'm 52.

8:57 This book is a little bit of me.

8:59 If you've found yourself like you've tipped your canoe and you're like, I need some help

9:03 here.

9:04 I got a little bit of age under me now and I'm saying, all right, let's, let's, let's

9:09 re align with how the Bible says we're supposed to be men.

9:12 And I want to help walk you through what biblical manhood looks like.

9:16 So walking you through, you could say bestowed, which I think is a very important point that

9:20 you make early on.

9:21 I'm going to read this quote.

9:22 Bottom line, manhood is bestowed.

9:24 It is passed down from man to boy.

9:26 And a little bit later in the introduction, you say this, we have no true right of passage

9:29 for when a boy becomes a man in our culture.

9:32 A lot of people have said this.

9:33 A lot of people have lamented it.

9:35 And then they read John Tyson's, the intentional father and they're like, well, that seems

9:38 like a lot.

9:39 So I don't think I got time in my schedule for all that.

9:42 But you're right.

9:43 When a woman just becomes a woman, right, it's more of a physical transformation whenever

9:47 they become a woman and they're of age to have children and all the different things.

9:51 There's no such thing as a man.

9:53 And so we're left kind of making it up as I go along.

9:56 But in our culture, we're the first culture, maybe in human history that doesn't have it.

10:00 And it takes a man to bestow manhood upon a boy, but now what we've got is boys trying

10:04 to bestow manhood on boys.

10:07 And that's what leads to just in today's culture, it's how much can you consume?

10:12 That could be money.

10:13 It could be girls.

10:14 It could be alcohol, drug, success, whatever it is.

10:17 And so it's a real problem.

10:18 One of the other, I think some guys with really good hearts make them, they make this mistake.

10:24 They read a great John Elders book and I love them all.

10:27 Okay.

10:28 What a great dude.

10:29 He's your friend.

10:30 I don't know him, but man, he's influenced me.

10:31 I love him.

10:32 But they read a book and then at 13, they do a rite of passage for their kid and be like,

10:35 now you're a man.

10:36 He's not a man.

10:37 No, he's not a man.

10:39 He needs his mom to take him to school.

10:41 He's not a man.

10:42 What my, I don't think this isn't in the book at all, but my encouragement to you.

10:46 This is what I did with JP.

10:48 I started with him eighth grade going into ninth grade.

10:52 And every year we did, we did these father, son adventure trips that included all kind

10:57 of adventure and hunting with some other men speaking into his life and speaking over

11:02 him.

11:03 But I didn't just do it one time at 13.

11:05 We did it at 1450s all the way up.

11:07 He's 19.

11:08 Now we've done it every year.

11:09 And then I attached a pretty significant gift to the point like when he was 18 on that

11:14 trip, I gave him an AR, you know, like you got to be a man to have an AR.

11:20 So it's that kind of thing.

11:21 It wasn't just one event.

11:23 It was more of an arc of me and other men speaking life into him over time.

11:29 Well, think about this.

11:30 I don't know if it's you said it or somebody said it.

11:32 It's like nobody remembers that one devotional date.

11:35 That's right.

11:36 So there I was.

11:37 It was Tuesday morning.

11:38 It was 530.

11:39 I had my coffee.

11:40 I was sitting in my kitchen and I read that.

11:41 It was day 74.

11:42 I'll never forget it of this, whatever book.

11:44 No, it's, it's every day.

11:46 That's why we do the daily blade.

11:48 It's why all that stuff exists is because now you can't just get it.

11:51 Like here and there.

11:52 And the other thing for the dads, this is for you, you're a young dad, okay?

11:55 As your boys get a little bit older, like about middle school age, you need to do whatever

11:59 it takes.

12:00 And this will 99% this will come through your local church.

12:03 You got to get the right men around your sons.

12:05 Yeah, that's the key.

12:07 It's not just you.

12:08 It's not just dad to son.

12:10 It is godly men in the community pouring into him because there's gone come a day and

12:14 those boys aren't going to talk to you like you want them to.

12:16 And I don't mean yes or no, sir.

12:17 Yeah.

12:18 They're not going to happen their life and like, ain't no way I'm confessing today.

12:21 This is what I'm going through.

12:22 But there's somebody they'll listen to.

12:23 So for JP, that's a, that's a man around here named Josh.

12:27 Josh has been JP's group leader.

12:28 He started with him in the sixth grade was they Friday, they, they still met yesterday

12:33 morning for Bible study and now JP's 20.

12:36 Okay.

12:37 You got to get some of those kind of men in your kids life.

12:40 So we're actually doing this thing together.

12:41 You got to think more, more generationally than individually, you know, well, they're

12:46 getting exposure to that right now.

12:47 Both of my boys, there was some scheduling thing where I had to take my five year old,

12:50 my three year old with me to fight club on Sunday night.

12:52 Guys, you've heard me talk about five club a billion times.

12:55 That's it.

12:56 And like several guys mentioned they're like, dude, your, your boys are like a joy to be

13:00 around.

13:01 They're not like bothering us and all that.

13:02 And they were so they got to run around the mat and all that.

13:05 But then whenever I started practice, they kind of had to be over on the side.

13:09 But when we got to the ab portion, which I'd try to make, especially brutal for fun.

13:14 We invited, I invited them to come over and they were like, what?

13:17 And so they sat between me and my buddy Rocky and like some different things.

13:21 And, and, I mean, they're doing stuff poorly, but they were just so tickled to death to

13:24 be with the big, the big guys.

13:26 You just said gold.

13:27 Okay.

13:28 So here, I wish I would have thought about this when I was writing this.

13:32 Here's what it means to bestow manhood.

13:34 You just invite boys into the tribe of men.

13:38 Yeah.

13:39 That's all it is.

13:40 And it could be abs on the mat.

13:41 That is how it starts.

13:43 And then you just continuously, as they get older, invite them into more and more responsibility

13:47 of manhood.

13:48 So one of the greatest moments for me as a dad, this summer, me and JP go fishing in

13:54 Canada, like Walla, Musky, all that kind of stuff's pretty awesome.

13:58 We stay on these houseboats.

13:59 It's incredible.

14:00 And my dad's there.

14:01 So there's three generations of Joseph Perry's and JP just acted grown, man.

14:07 Like, you know, he got the firewood.

14:09 He chopped it.

14:10 Like he just never acted like a boy once.

14:11 He acted like a man the whole time.

14:13 And I would after the fire pit one night, I was going to go tell him, Hey, dude, way

14:17 to be grown.

14:18 And he just says to me before I could get it out, he says, Daddy, thank you for raising

14:22 to me to be a grown man.

14:24 What a compliment.

14:25 It was also in that time after he did one semester, one year and Tallahassee that he

14:33 says that ain't me.

14:35 That's not me.

14:37 And honestly, I'm surrounded by a bunch of boys and I need to grow up and what's happening

14:41 in Tallahassee and good for him.

14:44 And my future is not there.

14:45 And so he came home right now.

14:47 He works full time here at the church and he's enrolled in fire school in January.

14:50 Yeah.

14:51 If you would have told me when Gretchen and I were just having our first kid, right,

14:55 that we would be stoked that my kid dropped out of college, yeah, because I got a bunch

14:59 of degrees.

15:00 I'd be like, what are you talking about?

15:02 But brother, I am telling you, I am so pumped that at 19, he figured out one, he said to

15:08 us, I just can't sit in the air condition and watch the NASDAQ for the rest of my life.

15:11 That is not, that ain't going to be my life.

15:13 Yeah.

15:14 I'm about to do something physical and I've got to help people with my life.

15:17 Brother, if that does not sound like a call of God on your life, I don't know what does.

15:22 And so after some study, he says, I think God's calling me to be a firefighter.

15:26 And dude, we're like, let's go.

15:28 That sounds like grown man stuff.

15:29 Well, I went up to me yesterday.

15:31 I'm like, hey, I never took you for a loser.

15:32 You drop out.

15:33 And he just kind of like smiled at me in his own right kind of JP kind of way.

15:37 But it's, it's literally in, we got to have a conversation.

15:39 It's like, yeah, man, if you're not going to the stem or you want to be a doctor, a lawyer

15:42 or whatever someday, like, you know, it's probably not somewhere you need to be.

15:45 But the level of maturity to understand that the juice I'm marinating in right now is toxic.

15:51 It's poisonous.

15:52 It's full of nonsense.

15:53 Like that, that's, that's a good thing.

15:55 And it's because he's been around voices.

15:58 But again, when dad says it, it just doesn't ring the same because I've been, I've been

16:02 the guy that dads frustrated at sometimes because I say the thing that they've been saying

16:06 and then their son actually gets it because I'm the one that said it.

16:09 So I've been on both sides of here's what's going to be hard for your boys, too.

16:12 And here's what's going to be hard for you because there is a similarity, like, because

16:15 we, there's so many people that do listen to us.

16:18 Yeah.

16:19 And then your boys are going to, and it's going to be hard for you to do that.

16:22 You know, like, you know, people actually pay money.

16:24 And when I say things, they, I just say it and they write it down and they do what I

16:27 say, you know, yeah.

16:29 And you just got to, as a, as a dad that loves his kid, uh, even more than you love the position

16:34 of being dad, you've got to get those other voices in your kid's life.

16:37 This is going to be a disaster.

16:38 I'm telling you right now, we may not get out of the intro on my notes because we just

16:41 keep flowing back and forth, but let's get, let's get back to another quote from the introduction.

16:45 There's nothing more dangerous in this world than an insecure, ungrounded man.

16:50 Yeah.

16:51 Go.

16:52 My mind immediately goes to King David.

16:53 Yeah.

16:54 In the time of year where Kings are supposed to go to war, he advocates that responsibility

16:58 and he's laying on the couch and the next season of his life is utter hell because he

17:05 was a bored man and it is very, very, very dangerous, a man with a little bit of extra

17:11 energy and a little bit extra spending money, bro, it's what casinos are full of.

17:15 It's what prisons are full of.

17:16 It's what gangs are full of.

17:17 Yeah.

17:18 Yeah, it's not good.

17:19 When you got, you got guys that their entire life revolves around when they can consume

17:26 the next thing, the next pornographic image, the next fantasy football draft, the next video

17:31 game.

17:32 And guys, if porn outright, just don't do it.

17:35 If you want to do fancy football, it's not, it's not going to ruin, run your entire life

17:39 and keep you from talking to your kids.

17:41 Go for it.

17:42 If you like playing video games as you wind down or whatever, like if that's your version

17:46 of reading a book, okay, I don't care.

17:48 But when I hear about grown men like playing Call of Duty for 14 hours, right?

17:54 Like barely like, I've literally heard this, this is not a joke.

17:58 They're men that will wear the pins.

18:00 They don't have to get up from the computer, right?

18:02 Cause they're doing like gaming and stuff like that.

18:03 And they don't want, they, you know, FOMO mixed with like mental disorders, right?

18:07 I guess leads you sitting there and crapping your pants.

18:09 So you can keep playing, you know, World of Warcraft or something like that.

18:12 But it's the, the ungrounded, you could say untethered is another way.

18:18 There's no purpose that they're living with.

18:20 They wake up every day and their parents have usually aided in this with no purpose of service.

18:27 Correct.

18:28 Of certainly not other people, but not even self.

18:30 They're slovenly, they're lazy.

18:33 And then Al said this recently, our Robertson said this in an interview.

18:36 He's like, when I got 40 pounds overweight, it was really easy to go to 80.

18:40 That's right.

18:41 Cause you're already not doing the stuff that you should be doing.

18:42 I listened to that in the gym this morning while I was doing legs.

18:45 But in that, the truth though, like a hundred percent.

18:47 So the godly way to think about this, if you look at this.

18:50 Did you say legs?

18:51 Yeah.

18:52 I thought guys that grew up from your era.

18:53 It was bench breast, bicep, curls only.

18:55 Have you broken the rules?

18:56 Are we out?

18:57 Are we busting out of that?

18:58 Oh, wait.

18:59 I'm a, I'm a leg guy.

19:00 All right.

19:01 Leg guys.

19:02 Yeah.

19:03 Y'all heard to hear first skip leg day.

19:04 Go ahead.

19:05 All right.

19:06 Yeah.

19:07 It wasn't a say.

19:08 Oh, the Shema says this.

19:09 All right.

19:10 Hero injury.

19:11 Oh, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.

19:12 That word means a card.

19:13 It doesn't just mean first on your list.

19:14 I've talked to this all the time.

19:15 It's more like God is the page on which you would write the list.

19:18 Yeah.

19:19 The thing to do is you don't necessarily have to throw off everything you like to do because

19:24 it's not the most purposeful thing in the world.

19:26 Just join the thing together.

19:27 Yeah.

19:28 I got loved to hunt and what I've decided and what I've done.

19:30 I brought my kids in.

19:31 I do discipleship there.

19:33 So even gaming, even though, you know, I think it's waste time, but whatever, man, if you

19:37 do that thing with your kids, like JP and I will play NCAA college season together, you

19:43 know, but you know, so there's some of that sort of stuff.

19:46 You just know, a godly man is not a selfish man.

19:51 Right.

19:52 And if you're being selfish with your time, with your energy, with your affections, and

19:56 you're not being a conduit with those things towards your wife and kids, there's a real

20:00 problem.

20:01 See, like you have brought, because you love Jews issue that that's probably like your

20:05 favorite thing out of like Jesus and your family, right?

20:08 Okay, great.

20:09 So instead of flushing it, now you probably don't go quite as much as you really want.

20:13 Right.

20:14 I would go every day.

20:15 Right.

20:16 So you've managed it and your wife knows that you love it.

20:19 And now what are you doing?

20:20 You're bringing your boys along.

20:21 It's going to give you something to do because it's, it's honestly really hard for dads to

20:26 just sit down, nose to nose with their kids and be like, let's have a conversation about

20:29 things that matter.

20:30 It's way more.

20:31 Work that way.

20:32 Show.

20:33 No.

20:34 But what you do is you build as many memories as you can.

20:36 You build as much trust as you can.

20:38 You build, you get that memory bank really full, you get that, you get that relational account

20:42 full of trust so that when they do need to talk to you, they've talked to you about

20:47 10,000 things that don't matter.

20:49 Now they can talk about something that matters.

20:50 Oh, and I've got a couple of James stories.

20:52 So James started transugists at the age of four and you know, he only goes once a week

20:56 because our family is flat out, not going to worship at the altar of the sports that

21:02 our kids are planning.

21:03 We're just not going to do it.

21:04 Right.

21:05 And if they get onto, you know, teams in middle school and all that and you okay, you got

21:08 to travel a little bit like that, that's fine, but you get, you get eye activity and all that.

21:12 But he's only going to turn it into missions.

21:14 Yeah.

21:15 Yeah.

21:16 It certainly can work that way.

21:17 So James loves takedowns at the end of practice, but it took him months to get his first successful

21:24 takedown.

21:26 And the first night he got his first takedown.

21:28 He got four or five more after that because it was like the damn book, right?

21:32 He floated off the mat to me after practice, right?

21:34 Because before practice that day, I said, buddy, I don't care if you get a takedown tonight,

21:40 but I want you to fricking go out there and get after it.

21:42 Right.

21:43 I want you to go scrap and he just, oh, yeah, let's go scrap and writing and he goes out

21:48 there and gets after it.

21:49 But like a week ago, we're in class.

21:52 And so we're doing, you know, it's kind of like bull in the ring, but it's with kids.

21:55 So one kid's out and it's just first to points, right?

21:58 And so the takedowns are just chaos.

21:59 They're not actual takedowns.

22:00 It's just one kid lays on the kid long enough for the coach to be like, all right, next

22:04 kid come in.

22:05 And so James is going against a kid who's about a year, year and a half older than him,

22:10 much bigger than him.

22:11 And this kid trains about five days a week, right?

22:14 And they have a pretty good little scrap, but James gets beat.

22:17 So he goes back to the back of the line.

22:18 Well, by the time James gets back to the front of the line, that kid's still out there,

22:22 right?

22:23 This big, bully, awful kid, right?

22:24 That I beat up in the parking lot afterwards.

22:26 No, the second one, they got after it a little harder.

22:30 James lost, right?

22:31 So James is walking back and he doesn't really know when to be disappointed now.

22:35 And everyone looks at me every time James doesn't win something like I'm going to freak

22:38 out, but I just look at him and, you know, just, you know, thumbs up, give him the heart

22:42 symbol, whatever.

22:43 The third time they go out there, these kids get after it, James loses, but they scrap

22:52 so hard that the adults that were getting ready for adult class started clapping for

22:58 a five year old and a six year old that just went to war and James is beaten down, right?

23:04 He's just lost to this kid three times.

23:06 He's disappointed.

23:07 He's all the things and he comes off the mat and I just, I tell them how proud I am of

23:11 them and all that and how good he did you hear the people clapping?

23:14 They were clapping for you, which he didn't realize, but then his coach shout out to Carl

23:17 Wolf, his, his coach and Carl's.

23:21 So it size matters to kids like because it's like, oh, big truck, you know, big ocean, big

23:27 animal.

23:28 Well, Carl's a big animal.

23:29 Right.

23:30 He's like six foot four, 280 pounds.

23:31 He's lost weight to get to 280 pounds.

23:33 You can deadlift like 800 pounds.

23:35 He's just a freak beast of a Viking human being, right?

23:37 Well, coach Wolf comes up to me, right?

23:40 And he says, Kyle, this was the best practice of James's life.

23:44 Wow.

23:45 Tonight.

23:46 And I'm like, really?

23:47 He goes, yeah, I don't care that he lost to that kid.

23:48 He's supposed to lose that kid, but he scrapped and I'm like, go tell James.

23:53 And so Carl walks up up to James and it's kind of like it was like a bestowing moment

23:59 because James doesn't know what to think.

24:00 All he knows is he lost to this kid three times, right?

24:03 Yeah, there's another scorecard.

24:05 And coach Carl comes up to him and just says, buddy, I'm so proud of you.

24:09 One, two, you scrapped so hard tonight.

24:12 I'm so thankful that you, do you see how good you've gotten just in these last like couple

24:18 of weeks?

24:19 And what do you think that does for a five year old that doesn't apparently forget anything,

24:23 right?

24:24 And so like, that's just one of those incredible moments where you're inviting other men because

24:28 I tell people all time, people are like, are you going to coach your sons?

24:30 I'm like, well, no, they're going to have a bunch of coaches.

24:33 They get one dad, right?

24:34 So yes, I will show them some Jiu Jitsu stuff.

24:36 Yes, I'll show them some baseball stuff.

24:37 But it's like, no, I want to invite good Godly coaches into their life to do what you've

24:42 been talking about.

24:43 Yeah.

24:44 One of the things we, I tried really hard to do, especially as JP was coming up in sports,

24:47 he's very athletic.

24:48 He did all the things, all sorts and was captain of this football team, all that stuff.

24:52 I would try to applaud attitude and effort.

24:55 Amen.

24:56 Stay away.

24:57 I did the same thing.

24:58 Stay away from performance.

24:59 Yep.

25:00 I didn't want to be like, good job.

25:01 You won.

25:02 I want to be like, bro, you had a great attitude and you were hustling because you can control

25:06 those things.

25:07 Right.

25:08 Like, especially in football, you have, I mean, you know, there's a lot of people out there.

25:11 And so even, I remember early, he kicked off the season with a sweet pick six.

25:15 I mean, of course, I'm celebrating all of that.

25:17 But I celebrated good.

25:18 You did what your coach said.

25:19 You backpedaled.

25:20 You read the route.

25:21 You jumped it.

25:22 Like, good job.

25:23 And then you outran the dude to the corner.

25:24 Way to go.

25:25 That was hustle, man.

25:26 That was hustle.

25:27 Yep.

25:28 You know?

25:29 So try to do that because a lot of guys, I mean, they had the right intentions, but what

25:33 they do when you reward performance, when you get the ice cream because you hit the ball,

25:37 then what does it mean when you don't hit the ball?

25:39 Hey, guys, real quick, I know a lot of you trained for very specific things.

25:43 So maybe you've got a mud race coming up, a mountain hunt, a 5K, or maybe you just want

25:47 to keep up with your kids or you just don't want to let the old man in.

25:51 But for a lot of you guys, whether you're working out at the global gym or even your

25:53 garage gym, you get there and you just don't know exactly what to do.

25:58 And so you just kind of settle for the same old workout routine, maybe some bench press,

26:01 bicep girls, a walk on the treadmill.

26:03 And you know, you're not really getting the most out of your workout plan.

26:06 And I want you guys to stop wasting time at the gym.

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27:46 That's mountain tough dot com promo code Kyle Oh, do you remember when Hixon was on the

27:53 show?

27:54 What he talked about with his dad?

27:55 He only got presents when he lost.

27:56 Oh, wow.

27:57 Yeah.

27:58 Cause his dad, like, and his dad's thrown him in there against men when he's like 13, right?

28:02 And he would, he would be like, no, I want you to lose, right?

28:06 Like I will celebrate when you lose cause that's the Jiu Jitsu thing is you either win or you

28:09 learn, right?

28:10 Yeah.

28:11 But, you know, shout out to my dad.

28:12 I mean, you know, my dad's kind of the kind of almost accidental wisdom a lot of times,

28:17 right?

28:18 Yeah.

28:19 Yeah.

28:20 Yeah.

28:21 Yeah.

28:22 He lost, you know, he lost his dad when he was 13 years old.

28:23 And so, you know, kind of, you know, it would stunt anyone's development when you use your,

28:25 your dad as such a formative time period.

28:27 But my dad would always celebrate the good things.

28:31 But so the example I use is like in baseball.

28:34 So if I went over four with three strikeouts and two errors in the field, but I ran two

28:38 in from my position, I hustled everywhere I went and I didn't chuck my helmet and in the

28:43 dugout whenever I struck out, my dad didn't say word on the drive home negative, right?

28:48 We're just chatted, right?

28:50 But if I hit, I went three for four with a couple of dingers and five RBIs and a diving

28:55 catch and all that.

28:56 But on that one ground out, I dogged at the first base.

28:59 Yeah.

29:00 My dad was on fan of that.

29:01 Good for him.

29:02 And that's the, again, that those are the things that we can control.

29:07 One thing you talked about in the introduction as well, and this is an image everybody's

29:10 seen, you got the medieval knight who, you know, has to bend down and then the person,

29:15 you know, knights them, you are sir, whatever of whatever, stand and be recognized all this

29:18 dumb crap, except not in like a Lord of the Rings context, because that's dumb and like

29:22 these aren't real things.

29:23 These are like elves and people with hairy feet and all those dorks that listen to that

29:27 and watch all that stuff.

29:28 But the quote from the book is don't miss this, he bows before he swings his sword.

29:34 That's right.

29:35 If there's, if there's a like a quote, like a, you know, less than a dozen words of the

29:39 entire book that I feel like sums up, maybe even your entire ministry, like I feel like

29:45 that said, again, don't miss this.

29:47 He bows before he swings his sword.

29:50 Let's talk more about that.

29:51 Yeah.

29:52 Uh, the whole honestly, the whole point when you look at everything the Bible tells you

29:57 to do to be a man, like to wake up, be watchful, your, your, your provider protector to stand

30:03 firm.

30:04 That means to fight to, you know, it's a high calling to be a man to leverage your strength

30:08 for the people that he has put under your authority, to let everything you do be done

30:12 in love.

30:13 You actually ought to get in there and be like, well, crap.

30:16 I don't think I can pull that off.

30:18 And Jesus would go perfect, perfect, blessed are the poor in spirit, because what you need

30:25 is need, because the moment you realize you can't do this on your own, now you are perfectly

30:31 positioned to say, Jesus, I need your help, you'll never be able to stand up like a man

30:35 until you've been your need to the God, man, Jesus Christ.

30:39 And then there's this really great promise on the Bible.

30:42 The moment you submit and surrender your life to the lordship of Jesus Christ, he deposits

30:45 the spirit of God on the inside of you.

30:47 And Peter one day says his divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness,

30:55 which means that God has given you everything you need to be what you have been called to

31:01 be by him.

31:03 You're equipped from the inside out, the one of the biggest problem with the people that

31:08 listen to me and you is they think manhood is an external thing.

31:13 It's about hunting and tattoos and what color your belt is and all of that.

31:16 And like I love to say in front of crowds, you know, say it.

31:21 We get new listeners every week to just say it, I know you're a man that mean that, you

31:24 know, you drive a big truck and you have muscles and tattoos and ride a Harley and, you know,

31:28 hunt your, hunt your groceries with a stick and a string.

31:31 I do all those things, none of it makes me a man.

31:34 It makes me awesome, but it doesn't make me a man.

31:37 What makes you a man is to bow to King Jesus and then him, knight you and say, arise and

31:44 now we're going to go to work.

31:46 And it's different, man, the spirit of him, the same spirit, the resurrected Christ from

31:50 the grave now lives on the inside of us.

31:53 And his divine power has given us everything we need to accomplish everything he's called

31:56 us to.

31:57 Joby, there's a reason why men though run away from that.

32:01 They run away from that calling because in this, this relates to the last quote of the

32:06 intro that I'll talk about, they're like, wait, I don't want to submit to that, right?

32:11 I want to submit to that.

32:12 So let me read this quote here.

32:14 The church historically, at least in the last 40 or 50 years has not helped very much

32:17 when it comes to defining manhood.

32:20 Do you know why most churches don't have a lot of men in them?

32:23 Because in a lot of churches, the common messages, hey, to be a Christian man, you really need

32:27 to be more like women.

32:29 And so let me tell you this, to be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus Christ does not

32:34 mean that you have to check your testicles at the door.

32:37 That's right.

32:38 I said it.

32:39 So echoing something that I've said a million different ways, usually a little bit more

32:43 crass than that, but hey, how dare you say bad words in your book there, Joby.

32:47 But the thing that's very interesting about all that, I don't know what just fell.

32:51 All right, cool.

32:52 Things are falling apart.

32:54 But the thing that's interesting about that is that's where a lot of men fall, correct?

32:58 So I go back to one of the most impactful emails I've ever gotten, which imagine how

33:02 many sentences have started with that before the most impactful email I've ever gotten.

33:06 I had just done my Glover's podcast.

33:08 It was the, you know, most watch thing in the history of my Glover's podcast, which was

33:13 shocking, right to everybody, probably including Mike, you know, more than Jaco, more than any

33:16 stompling anybody because of the content of what we were saying.

33:19 I get an email from a guy in his 80s.

33:22 Guys have heard me talk about this before, but I'll repeat it.

33:25 And he said, when I was a young man, I thought I could be godly or I could be tough.

33:32 So I chose to be tough.

33:34 And it wasn't until listening to you talk to Mike about biblical masculinity that I realized

33:39 this entire time I could have been both as opposed to lamenting the time wasted.

33:45 And I can't go back now and regret and all those things.

33:47 He's like, from this point forward, right?

33:52 That's what I'm going to do.

33:53 I'm going to be godly and manly.

33:55 And so part of the issue is guys don't want to submit to wispy haired Danish soft featured

34:02 like, you know, QT hippie Jesus.

34:06 Correct.

34:07 They don't, they don't want to bow to that guy.

34:08 They don't feel like he's worthy or strong enough, right?

34:11 So they're going to tend towards the things that they can control that they think manifest

34:15 manhood, right?

34:16 I put it all in the category of aggro, right?

34:20 So you have these ministries out there that your amount of pullups that you can do in

34:24 a set is equal to the amount of biblical masculinity that you have.

34:28 And I'm all for pullups, man.

34:29 Let's do a bunch of pullups, right?

34:31 But these people are losing the thread somewhere.

34:34 And I love when I get lectured by people about there's just so much grace lacking in

34:38 your message.

34:39 Why isn't there's more grace?

34:40 It's like, because there's a pendulum here, there's lamb on one side and there's line

34:45 on the other.

34:46 And the perfect placement of the pendulum is in the middle.

34:48 Correct.

34:49 The pendulum is so far on the lambside, though, that I'm bending toward the lion's side a

34:54 lot more because the pendulum's just got to come back to the center just a little bit.

34:58 Yeah, like any good coach, like any good coach, if your running game is not good, then you

35:02 don't ignore the running game and just keep passing, right?

35:06 You work on the running game.

35:07 Right.

35:08 And is it really great to just overlook something that's going to kill somebody and pat them

35:12 on the head?

35:13 No, it's not grace.

35:14 Right.

35:15 Yeah, man, the church has not been good at this.

35:18 Obviously, we have a focus on discipling men here.

35:23 And the example I use is, you know, if I wear my shirt, it looks fine, doesn't look great

35:28 because I can't do great.

35:29 I can do fine.

35:30 If Gretchen wears her blouse, she looks great.

35:32 If I come home from work today and she's got on one of my flannel snap buttons, she goes

35:36 great.

35:37 Yes, ma'am.

35:38 She's a praise God.

35:39 If I wear one of her blouses, it's not great.

35:42 Have you ever tried and failed or is it just like a thought process?

35:45 It's just a thought process.

35:46 Okay.

35:47 But the church has been a blouse for the last 50 years and we've asked me, look, you know,

35:53 people have talked about this before, but the 11th commandment is not be nice.

35:57 And so many places that are like, man, just come in and act like women.

36:01 Just sit down, be quiet, maybe put a row bone, talk with feelings.

36:04 Yeah.

36:05 That's not it, man.

36:06 Stand up act like men and obviously you do too.

36:10 Also, you know, I don't want to throw this person under the bus.

36:13 So I'll be vague with my story, but I remember, um, I remember being in a setting where there

36:20 was a guy making an announcement and he was like, Hey, before we get started today, I just

36:24 want to let y'all know that, Hey, every, you know, every Thursday at, you know, 3 30 in

36:29 the morning, we get in here and we do a men's, uh, men's prayer, breakfast, or bread around

36:33 being dumb.

36:34 Yeah, but we do, you know, this men's event Bible study and just like, man, if you want

36:39 to go deep with a bunch of guys and you just want to pour your heart out and just be a

36:43 part of what God's doing in this church and just man, really just be vulnerable with a

36:48 bunch of men, you know, just be here Thursdays at 6 a.m.

36:52 And I just kind of go, I kind of look around like, am I the only one that's kind of weirded

36:57 out by this?

36:58 And on the way, because Kelsey kind of noticed and she kind of like squeezed my knee like

37:01 don't, don't say, like don't say anything, and on the way home, there's just something

37:07 in my spirit.

37:08 So out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks, I just go, that may have been

37:11 the worst pitch I've ever heard.

37:14 He may as well have stood up and said, Hey guys, come to the church at 6 a.m. on Thursdays.

37:18 We're going to be rubbing our wieners together.

37:20 And I was just kind of like, guys, yeah, I was just like, I mean, like, cause most men,

37:26 like manly men are not going to be like, Oh, an opportunity to go to a room and pour my

37:30 heart out to strangers.

37:31 Yeah.

37:32 The axis is great.

37:33 They need those things.

37:34 But a lot of times they don't know that they need those things when there's steps before

37:38 they get there.

37:39 Yeah.

37:40 Seven steps a Sunday.

37:41 Look, we just did a thing here.

37:42 We're studying through first Kings and the life of Elijah, right?

37:46 And I just stand up one day and say Tuesday morning, 6 a.m. all we have is Bibles and

37:52 black coffee.

37:53 Men, you're invited to be here.

37:55 Phil Robson would be proud.

37:56 That's it.

37:57 1800 men showed up for eight weeks in a row, the pictures were incredible.

38:01 And that's what we did.

38:03 Vinky and I would walk through a text for 30 minutes.

38:06 We would tell guys to get any of the threes or four squares or triangles and answer these

38:11 three questions.

38:12 The questions were be vulnerable.

38:14 That's what they were.

38:15 Right.

38:16 I mean, that you, but you don't announce it.

38:18 Hey, anybody want to cuddle as I have a cuddle fast way y'all didn't have a little binkies

38:22 for everybody.

38:23 We had no, we just had Bibles and black coffee and men just saying like this.

38:27 It's like, so the Bible does call us to that.

38:30 But you're right.

38:31 So you've talked about this 10,000 times.

38:32 I talk about it all the time.

38:34 A part of it is our misunderstanding of this biblical word meek blessed are the meek meek

38:40 that mean week in Greek meek means bit bridal horse.

38:44 And so to be a godly man, you've got to turn the reins over on your life to Jesus.

38:49 And we know this to be true that a broken horse, a tamed horse is stronger.

38:53 It lives longer.

38:54 It can do more.

38:55 It can accomplish more.

38:56 And so if you really want to be a strong man, you really want to be the man God's called

38:59 you to be.

39:00 Then that's what you got to do.

39:01 You got to turn over the reins.

39:03 Your invitation for vulnerability and opening up your heart, the language you use is military

39:10 language.

39:11 Foxhole.

39:12 Yeah.

39:13 I use mark two language.

39:14 Matt carrier every see, it's just, it's actually the same core.

39:18 It's all the same stuff.

39:19 Yeah.

39:20 Just got to have a little bit of a brain as to what you're inviting men into right band

39:24 number others.

39:26 That's a good, that's a good line.

39:27 Well, it always gets a giggle whenever I go somewhere and talk and like, this is how

39:31 I can get people to pay attention to what I do for a living.

39:34 I say, yeah, you know, most men's ministries are just women's ministries that have been

39:37 repackaged for men.

39:41 People perk up and they're like, tell me more.

39:43 What does that mean?

39:44 And that's why the daily blade's a thing.

39:46 Yeah.

39:47 Right.

39:48 Cause it all the stuff that was in the marketplace that you and I found as we were on our own

39:51 journeys to find stuff to, you know, infuse us with more Bible and stuff like that, it

39:55 was always some soft guy saying, Hey, let's all center ourselves as we get into this thing.

40:01 And there's, you know, it's like a lot is one month or either like a John MacArthur deep

40:06 dive.

40:07 Right.

40:08 And so that you had to have a master's degree in Greek to get through, right?

40:11 Right.

40:12 And so for most men, and that's my encouragement, cause I used to talk to people about men's

40:15 ministry.

40:16 I was like, I don't want to talk about men's ministry anymore.

40:17 Cause what you mean is programming.

40:18 I don't want to talk about programming.

40:19 Correct.

40:20 I don't want to talk about man-friendly churches.

40:22 How do we do that?

40:23 Like, and that starts in a lot of different ways and we'll get to more things.

40:26 But I think we can safely say that we've, we've beaten the introduction to death.

40:31 Now we need to get to chapter one, right?

40:33 So it'll be a miracle if we get out of it, but you start chapter one with the question

40:37 of what is a man?

40:38 And I actually am going to go back to the intro to read a quick quote, but as a result,

40:42 if we're gut level, honest, most of us are left guessing, what is a real man and how

40:46 do I become one?

40:47 Answer.

40:48 Man, there's this old Charlie Brown cartoon.

40:50 They used to have it in my office and Charlie Brown's shooting a bow and arrow and Lucy

40:55 comes out and she's like, wow, Charlie, you're amazing at this.

40:58 And he's like, it's not hard.

40:59 And he just fires an arrow into the barn and then draws the target around.

41:04 And I thought, boy, I mean, if that's not a picture of like modern day manhood.

41:10 So we got to go all the way back to the beginning to Genesis chapter one and two to figure out

41:14 what a man is and God has given a man three things, a woman to love, work to enjoy and

41:21 a will to obey.

41:23 And that's it.

41:24 And under the banner of worship, the way that you were to worship God is going to work,

41:31 loving your woman and obeying God.

41:34 And so fundamentally, that's the beginning of it right there.

41:37 That's what headship is.

41:38 And then the enemy comes in and lies and when, and then everything is broken.

41:43 If you think about the hardest things in your life, it is those three categories.

41:47 Like this woman that God has given you as a gift.

41:50 It's almost like there's this evil force out there that's trying to carry all the cards

41:56 or work, man, work, like you're just clicking on serving Jesus, doing your thing, doing

42:01 your podcast and all of a sudden your credit card company is like, we don't like what you

42:05 say.

42:06 You can't do credit cards on our platform anymore.

42:09 That is a part of the fall, man.

42:10 That is a part of the curse of the devil of hell himself against what you're doing.

42:14 And then the biggest battle we ever fight is the will to obey on the inside of us.

42:18 We're all like Paul and Roman seven, like, I want to do good and I can't, I can't pull

42:21 it off.

42:22 And so we are even, even though we are created in the image of God, we are fractured image

42:27 bearers and all three of those arenas have been fractured.

42:30 And I think a lot of guys, we go through and I, because man, it is not bestowed upon us.

42:35 We don't have a rite of passage.

42:37 And inherent in all that is we lack identity, right?

42:40 Even men that would identify with Christ don't identify as a Christian man, right?

42:45 Because you shouldn't put any qualifiers before Christian, right?

42:48 Democrat Christian liberal or, you know, it's not actually a thing, but like, you know,

42:53 like conservative Christian or like Texan Christian, like you can't really do that.

42:57 And so the interesting thing about that is whenever you are tethered, it goes back to

43:01 what we were talking about earlier, you have to be grounded, not to be tethered and it

43:05 can't be tethered to your accomplishments or to your level of consumption.

43:09 But you mentioned also there the words of a woman and the power of a woman.

43:13 So I know about 5% of our audience are our lionesses and we're so thankful for you guys.

43:19 What's funny is whenever I come to public places or even like the church or all that,

43:23 it's a lot of the women.

43:24 And it's so funny because they're like, Hey, I know I'm not supposed to be listening to

43:27 your show.

43:28 But and I'm like, no, no, no, but like when they got other teams, slave book, oh my gosh,

43:32 when I hear, you know, women that are listening to the, uh, the forging table or the daily

43:36 play, like with their kids, is they're driving them to school or something like that.

43:39 And you know, I've talked about that, that woman here.

43:41 I met at the church and single mom and, you know, she, you know, that's, that's the godly

43:46 men.

43:47 She's getting around her son are the dorks, like me and my buddies, like sitting around

43:51 a table talking about the Bible and, you know, mispronouncing Greek words.

43:54 And so like, but that, that's like a really cool thing, but there's a quote from chapter

43:58 one about this, I cannot put into words the power of encouragement from a woman.

44:03 Later in the chapter, you say this, I can stand up to pretty much anyone.

44:06 But when I get home and walk in my door, I can be terrified of the opinion of a five

44:11 foot seven and one hundred and none of your business pound girl that I'm married to.

44:15 It's just true.

44:16 We care what our wives think and say, which is often the reason we say nothing.

44:21 So, uh, you and I are in the middle of peak behind the curtain, we're doing a marathon

44:26 of recordings today, you and I will be recording five different podcasts episodes for different

44:31 things today.

44:33 During our first one, I get this text from my wife, who knows what I'm doing.

44:36 She knows I'm in the middle of a marathon, which, you know, thank, thank the Lord two

44:40 years ago with my old vocal cords and all that.

44:44 This would not have been a possibility to wouldn't have been a possibility, but my wife

44:47 sent me this.

44:48 I'm so proud of the work you are doing.

44:50 I know I'm always a little weird and still learning how to support you.

44:54 Just know I'm very proud of you.

44:55 I love you very much.

44:57 And so she's got a little bit of vulnerability in there, like I know I'm always a little

45:00 bit weird because my job is weird, right?

45:04 Sure.

45:05 It's weird when I get stopped in the airport by somebody that has changed the way they

45:09 view the world because of something that I say.

45:11 And then I invariably introduce them to her and they're thankful to her.

45:15 They don't know her.

45:16 She's like, this is strange.

45:17 It's strange.

45:18 It's weird, right?

45:19 Happens the same thing with Gretchen, right?

45:21 But what that does for you, right?

45:25 The amount of lead that puts in your pencil when you're like, all right, like my woman

45:28 says, we're good to go.

45:29 And as you've told me before in a lot of different contexts, if you're in ministry, especially

45:34 like your bride, like she's either your launch pad or you're sealing.

45:38 And so for all you ladies out there that have men in your life that you have their ear,

45:43 whether that's your husband, your sons, your, your nephews, like your brothers, like any

45:48 of those types of things, a word from you, a calm word from you is just substantial and

45:55 incredible.

45:56 Yeah, dude.

45:57 Encouragement on the lips of a wife is gold and part of the husband.

46:01 Yeah.

46:02 I mean, it's, you know, goes back to love and respect, right?

46:05 I see.

46:06 Like he's supposed to be respected.

46:07 Yeah.

46:08 You can tell me love him.

46:09 That's great.

46:10 I want to hear that I'm loved.

46:11 Yeah.

46:12 Well, so like for you and Gretchen, you all have obviously very close relationship.

46:13 You've been very, very public about that, but there have been instances in your life.

46:17 Well, maybe even talk about this, you're ready to get out of the ministry a while ago and

46:22 it was, it was a haeboo pause message from your wife that changed everything.

46:30 Yeah.

46:31 I mean, it was kind of like Elijah.

46:33 I was doing college ministry at UGA.

46:34 It was going really good.

46:35 I was at a terrible church that didn't believe the Bible.

46:37 And so I was just getting killed every weekend at church because I'm a Bible guy.

46:41 Yeah.

46:42 And then I got a couple of offers to make six figures.

46:44 And I was making $30,000 a year or something.

46:47 Yeah.

46:48 And just to kind of like be an executive coach and I don't know.

46:52 And I truly considered it.

46:54 And the guy that was trying to recruit me was like, you can give your wife what she's

46:58 always wanted.

46:59 And he was thinking neighborhood.

47:00 Yeah.

47:01 Yeah.

47:02 And I almost tapped out of the ministry.

47:05 And Elijah's up under a broom tree thinking he was done saying, God, I'm done.

47:10 And God sent him an angel and God sent me an angel in her name, Gretchen.

47:13 And she's like, I don't think the Lord's done with you.

47:16 Now this seems better.

47:17 I told that story a couple of weeks ago when we were studying through the life of Elijah.

47:21 And she said, give it one more chance.

47:23 And I ended up coming to Jacksonville.

47:25 And here we are.

47:26 So none of this, none of the 11 22 and all of this is possible without Gretchen Martin.

47:30 That's a fact.

47:31 So I get home from church after telling that story.

47:35 She came on Thursday night.

47:36 And so when I got home from 11 22 that Sunday, she looked at me, she was like, can you imagine

47:40 our lives if you would have stepped away from this?

47:43 And then she said, I actually don't think it would have worked.

47:47 And I was like, what do you mean?

47:48 And she said, you have such a gift to preach God's word.

47:52 And I think it's a gift from him.

47:53 And so if you were just going to sell stuff, I think he would have taken it and given it

47:57 to somebody else.

47:58 Would it?

47:59 I mean, that's all encouragement.

48:01 And I'm just telling you, even we just ran a church leader summit here earlier this week.

48:07 Yeah.

48:08 Shout out, J.O.

48:09 And apparently you crushed it.

48:10 And so, you know, as that thing was wrapping up, she just came to kind of cheer me on.

48:15 And just a text.

48:16 Just I'm so proud of you.

48:18 It matters so much to the five percent of the women that are listening.

48:20 You have no idea the impact whether positive or negative that you have with your words

48:26 and your husband.

48:27 So you sharing that a couple of weeks ago, again, you guys are hearing this in the future.

48:34 It actually it actually shook something loose in me when you described that.

48:38 And this is why, because I graduate undergrad top of my class, right?

48:45 I graduate my master's program top of my class, student of the year, project of the year,

48:49 all the things.

48:51 I'm the rocket ship, right?

48:54 And it's just what direction do I want to go had this weird job with Major League Baseball.

48:59 And then I came back and got in, you know, the Oklahoma family business, which is technically

49:02 oil and gas.

49:03 Everyone's got to have a foray into oil and gas at some point.

49:06 And I look up at one point and in my first 10 years out of college, I had 11 or 12 different

49:14 jobs, right?

49:15 Yeah.

49:16 And I kept getting hired places based on just me that the energy and oh my gosh, this guy's

49:22 ideas and all these things like I got hired several places for jobs that didn't exist.

49:27 They're like, we just we just need to hire you and figure it out, right?

49:31 And you would think on paper, you're just going to crush it at this job.

49:36 The other thing is whether it's selling insurance or recruiting or whatever, the different jobs

49:42 that I did.

49:44 And I always had, I wrote here a stunted amount of success, enough success where I wouldn't,

49:50 you know, basically go home and, you know, chastise myself.

49:54 But I never, I never hit the Grand Slam.

49:56 It was a bunch of seeing eye singles, right?

50:00 Yeah.

50:01 And as I heard you say that, you know, I started doing the sundown life thing, you know, decide

50:08 a few years ago, four years ago, I guess that let's just do this full time, see if this

50:11 is a thing thing and the Lord has blessed it to a tremendous degree.

50:17 I feel like I'm over the X more than I've been over the X in my entire life.

50:20 And I'm like, what if God was keeping me from that?

50:24 Because I mean, my first job out of school was a 100% commission job.

50:29 And here I am telling my, my new wife, like, Oh man, we're like, I'm going to have a new

50:33 truck and a Lexus and a, and a this and you're going to have a bunch of stuff and we're going

50:37 to be living in this type of house and all that.

50:39 Everything was like commercial success and residual income and all the things and I'm

50:42 pro all that stuff.

50:44 But it was not there.

50:46 Like I just never got to that level of success and I'm like, what is wrong with me?

50:51 I'm competing in these areas and I'm out competing everyone around me, but I'm not solidified

50:57 in the success.

50:59 And then I come do this podcast was started with me recording in my underwear in my closet,

51:04 right?

51:05 For the first 100 episodes or so.

51:07 And now we're at where we're at now.

51:09 And so like that, that something like in the last two weeks is kind of shook loose like,

51:13 Oh, this is, this is maybe what exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

51:16 I also know that we first started hanging out like four years ago and you were telling

51:21 me the story.

51:22 And I was like, what did your wife think when you were like, dude, I'm just going to push

51:26 all the chips in and you were like, Oh, no, you don't understand Kelsey's my ride or

51:29 die.

51:30 It was her idea.

51:31 She's like, burn the ship.

51:32 So let's go.

51:33 Let's go.

51:34 You cannot disconnect those two things.

51:35 No, if your wife is like, well, yeah, that's fine to do in your, in your hobby time, but

51:39 I need you delivering pizzas or something secure, you know, then you would never get here.

51:44 So it matters.

51:45 Well, and I think one thing that it speaks to as well as some you talk about in chapter

51:48 one is where as well, and there we have it, the number one problem in all of manhood,

51:52 they're passive in their marriages, they're passive as it pertains to their personal

51:56 health, they're passive in the thermostat versus thermometer of their spiritual household.

52:03 They are willing to sacrifice financially to send their kid to private Christian school,

52:08 but they are not willing to also memorize their weekly scriptures of a wana because they want

52:14 the church to disciple their kid and to raise them up in the nurse or an admonition Lord.

52:18 They want some random woman at a private Christian school to raise up their child on the nurture

52:23 and admonition of the Lord and they want to go play golf and it's like, guys, you're

52:28 being passive.

52:29 Yeah, I think I mean, yes, I'm pro America, obviously of all the terrible countries that

52:33 have ever existed.

52:34 This is the best one.

52:35 That's right.

52:36 But the shadow of the American dream, man, it's a deep dark shadow.

52:40 All right.

52:42 Life praise God, liberty, praise God, the pursuit of happiness, eek.

52:47 That's rough, man, because ultimately, oftentimes what it means in modern day America is just

52:53 the pursuit of comfort.

52:53 Yep.

52:54 And if you want to be a comfortable man, I would highly suggest not to be a Christian

52:58 man.

52:59 And so a lot of dudes, man, they're like a water balloon and they just run away from

53:02 the pressure.

53:03 Yeah.

53:04 And so raising kids is hard.

53:06 So I'm just going to run to the golf course all the time.

53:08 Again, man, there's nothing wrong with golf, but you better leverage it for the kingdom

53:12 of God and then all of a sudden it's no problem, play with your kids, take your lost friends,

53:18 you know, that kind of thing.

53:19 But oftentimes what happens is people run away from the hard thing.

53:23 Here's something that's got me a little bit agitated lately where I think men are failing

53:28 miserably.

53:29 Okay.

53:30 You sit on your couch and you watch your cable news station and you've got all of these

53:34 incredible ideas about things you have no control over.

53:39 Like honestly, like Charlie Kirk, like what's happening in Israel and Gaza, what's happening

53:43 with Ukraine and Russia, the Southern border and fentanyl, right?

53:47 And then you feel righteous because you have righteous ideas.

53:51 Meanwhile, your kids are being freaking discipled by demons on TikTok in their bedroom on their

53:56 iPad.

53:57 Come on.

53:58 And you've got, you don't even care.

53:59 You don't even know.

54:00 You don't even know what their fears are.

54:02 You don't even that, that's what the enemy can do.

54:05 Everything God creates.

54:07 The enemy corrupts and so you're sitting on your couch with these righteous ideas about

54:11 what, how the world should be changed.

54:13 And yet you actually have control over what's happening in your house, but it's hard, man.

54:18 It's hard.

54:19 It's hard to go sit down with your kids, have hard conversations to say no to what everybody

54:24 else says yes to with their kids.

54:26 It's hard.

54:27 And so when the world squeezes it, all of your energy just runs over here.

54:30 Pull ups are hard.

54:32 So you just eat donuts every day or whatever and blame it on something else, blame it on

54:37 your thyroid.

54:38 Okay.

54:39 I don't, regardless of what your thyroid's doing, your butt needs to be in the gym doing

54:42 hard things.

54:43 It's hard to get up a few minutes early and read the Bible.

54:46 You know, it's hard to do these things.

54:48 If you're life, if you're being honest and you look at the mirror and you realize every

54:53 time I get the squeeze of pressure, my effort, energy and affections are going in the opposite

54:57 of the way, you're not being the kind of man God has called you to be.

55:01 Yeah. And the thing is, is you become a lot easier to take out as well.

55:04 And so we've actually made it to chapter two, chapter two is called be watchful.

55:08 Let me read this quote here, when the enemy takes one of us out, everyone suffers.

55:12 The ripple effects of a man that goes down are indescribable.

55:15 In fact, there's a whole lot of women and children in your orbit in mind that carry with

55:19 them a great deal of pain because a man did not defend and protect.

55:24 He left his post having chosen something or someone else.

55:28 And so inherent in this is you talk about a lot with pastors, monies and honeys, usually

55:34 take these guys out.

55:35 You have guys that have not built an accountability structure around them.

55:39 It's all cult of personality.

55:40 They don't have elders.

55:41 They have a board of directors that they are also the chairman of so they can't even be

55:44 kicked out of their own ministry, but even outside of the world of ministry, you have

55:48 guys just living in isolation.

55:51 You have guys that are so easy to pick off because they're the baby zebra that got lost.

55:57 Like they're the one that's out by themselves with a bum knee.

56:00 And it's the same thing that we've talked about and you've kind of, you know, absorbed

56:04 some of this language, like the lone wolf thing, right?

56:07 This idea of I'm the lone wolf how and at the moon, what's like even the alphas, right?

56:12 Eventually are taken out from the pack.

56:14 They are either killed by the rest of the pack.

56:17 They freeze to death.

56:18 They starve to death or they're killed by another predator, right?

56:21 So what is the appeal exactly the lone wolf thing, right?

56:24 Is it that dorky t-shirt you bought in the 80s that was tie dye and you have the wolf

56:28 howl and at the moon?

56:29 Is that the point?

56:30 That's because it's like at what point did you think that that was the aspirational identity

56:35 that we're supposed to lay over our lives?

56:36 Yeah, what's very interesting to me is so what I love to do is just use the Bible as

56:42 commentary unto itself, be watchful as a military term.

56:45 Like you are well aware that if somebody is on watch, that means that they are on guard

56:50 is what that means.

56:52 So many American men are not on guard.

56:55 They have been lulled to sleep by the pacifier of comfort.

56:59 Peter in 1 Peter 5 is talking to the men of the church.

57:02 He's talking to the elders and every Christian man ought to live their life in such a way

57:07 that they could be tapped on the shoulder and say, Hey, you were qualified to be an elder

57:11 and then Peter just walks through some of the common things that take men out.

57:15 And one of them is isolation that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking one

57:19 to devour.

57:20 It's too easy.

57:21 It always takes out the one.

57:22 So what we have to be better at is going to other men that are outside of the herd and

57:28 saying, come get in the herd while you heal up.

57:30 One of the things about the Matt carrier idea that blows me away is to switch the theology

57:35 a little bit.

57:36 So the four guys carry the paralyzed guy to the mat.

57:38 They tear a hole in the roof and the Bible says Jesus saw the faith of the friends and

57:42 said to the man your sins are forgiven.

57:44 Yeah.

57:45 You have to have the kind of men in your life that when your fate is thin, you can borrow

57:48 some of theirs and you're like, wait a minute.

57:52 I can't get saved based on their fate.

57:53 That's not what I'm saying.

57:54 But in Ephesians, what you read earlier, the piece of armor associated with faith is called

57:59 a shield.

58:00 And me and you've talked about this ad nauseam.

58:01 It's like the movie 300.

58:03 They would connect those shields, brother to brother, family member to family member.

58:07 So if me and you are beside each other and whatever your dad's on your right and my dad's

58:12 on my left, and if I go down, then the assumption is your shield of faith and my dad's shield

58:17 of faith, they're going to cover me in my time of faithlessness.

58:21 And so are you surrounding yourself with dudes that have enough faith for you to borrow in

58:25 those times?

58:26 You know what's interesting about that as well as you say that.

58:27 I've said it a million times, but I just thought of that's why you were saying that.

58:32 In the failings formation, it was an offensive, it was a defensive offensive thing.

58:39 You would move in a defensive way in an offensive manner, right?

58:43 It just didn't make sense.

58:44 That's why I was so effective, right?

58:46 But as I'm striking with my spear and my right arm, I am being protected.

58:52 Correct.

58:53 And so when you stick your neck out, right, you got people that are down to protect you.

58:58 And what you're alluding to is that they found out that if they put family members together,

59:03 they were less likely to run away because if I'm protecting my brother to my left and

59:06 my dad's to my right, my uncle's on the other side of him, I'm probably not going to run

59:10 away like a coward because that's the only way the failings breaks, right?

59:14 So and you talked about pursuit of comfort again.

59:16 So I want to read a quick quote from chapter two, but it says, let me let you in on a secret.

59:21 There is a part of the American dream that is 100% at odds with the message of the gospel,

59:24 the pursuit of comfort.

59:25 So that alluded to what you were talking about earlier.

59:27 But there's another thing that you talked about in chapter two.

59:28 And this is where, you know, you and I have disagreed publicly and a little bit privately

59:32 about this, you know, exactly what's coming.

59:34 So I'm going to read a long quote here because I think it's very important.

59:38 And we even if after this, we still have some disagreement, there should be a better level

59:43 of understanding, not just for you and I, but also everybody else that's listening.

59:46 But when I look out across our church, I see that generally the women worship much more

59:51 than the men.

59:52 They're more expressive.

59:54 Most men stand there with their hands in their pockets, transport them to an NFL game and

59:58 put beers in their hands and they're jumping up and down and raising both hands and screaming

1:00:01 at the top of their lungs with their gridiron hero.

1:00:04 When their gridiron hero carries a little pigskin across a painted line, but put them

1:00:08 in church before the God of this universe and every other who spoke everything we see

1:00:13 in existence and who offers every one of us a return to the Father.

1:00:16 And at best, we're indifferent.

1:00:18 Our response is to shrug and say, eh, why do we do this?

1:00:22 Because we're deeply prideful.

1:00:24 So this, so I agree with the sentiment big time.

1:00:29 It's always, and I still don't have a great apologetic for this.

1:00:32 Why do even fervent Christians react almost in a golf clap manner when somebody gives

1:00:38 their life to Christ, but transport them to a UFC watch party or to a Jags game.

1:00:44 Yeah.

1:00:45 They're absolutely losing their top knot whenever their team scores.

1:00:48 But the point I really wanted to dig in here is it seems like we keep force feeding men

1:00:57 effeminate music without parts, so I'm going to key that they can't hit.

1:01:03 So I'll give you that in most places.

1:01:05 We don't do that here.

1:01:06 Well, even here we're, we're singing basically Christian top 40, right?

1:01:12 And the songs are let's just be honest, the bands here murder it.

1:01:17 Last night, let's go like, I, so I'm, I'm kind of weird.

1:01:21 I'm not a musician, but I can play the drums, right?

1:01:24 I don't understand music.

1:01:25 I don't understand timing and all that kind of stuff.

1:01:27 But drums speak to me in a different way.

1:01:29 And there's some kid, right?

1:01:31 Playing the drums the last two nights.

1:01:33 And I'm like, staying, yeah, I'm like, staying facing the whole time.

1:01:36 He's playing.

1:01:37 And I went up to it.

1:01:38 I'm like, Hey, you got to introduce me to this kid.

1:01:40 And so it's talk to him a little bit.

1:01:41 He's a big skill fan.

1:01:42 So I like FaceTime, John Cooper is kind of a cool deal.

1:01:44 And so I'm like worshiping with him because he was kind of in the, in the moment.

1:01:48 But it's almost like, Hey, we keep force feeding these songs to men.

1:01:54 The men maybe don't like the genre and all that, which isn't terribly an excuse, but it's

1:01:57 like, it's like we've, we've said that worship music is a genre, which it's not.

1:02:04 That music exists across genres.

1:02:07 There's a big problem.

1:02:08 And then we tell guys, if you don't like this music and if you don't raise your hands, then

1:02:12 something's wrong with you.

1:02:13 You got a pride issue.

1:02:14 And I'm like, something is wrong with you.

1:02:15 If at some point you don't raise your hands to Jesus.

1:02:17 Okay.

1:02:18 So let's talk more about that.

1:02:19 Let's go.

1:02:20 The context of this is Peter is unpacking all the things that can take you out.

1:02:23 And one of them is pride.

1:02:25 He says, humble yourself, the Lord, worship is war because nothing will fight against pride

1:02:31 like worship.

1:02:33 Because here's what you're saying.

1:02:34 When you get in there, you're saying that regardless of the song, fundamentally, what

1:02:38 I am saying is I'm not the point.

1:02:41 You're the point.

1:02:42 We're not singing to me.

1:02:43 As a default mechanism.

1:02:44 Correct.

1:02:45 So worship immediately humbles you because we're not singing to you.

1:02:49 Worship also helps us put our preferences aside.

1:02:52 Now it's a little bit of a cheat here because we sing the songs that I prefer.

1:02:55 So that goes really good for me.

1:02:57 But it is.

1:02:58 Okay.

1:02:59 So that is an active way to fight against the way the enemy takes us out with pride.

1:03:03 It also tells the devil of hell, you can go back to hell because the thing that got the

1:03:06 devil kicked out of heaven is he wanted to be looked to and not through.

1:03:11 So all of that matters.

1:03:12 Now I would push on all the churches and please think about, if you want men to worship, then

1:03:20 consider them in your worship sets, et cetera, you know.

1:03:24 So our sound here is on purpose.

1:03:26 Listen to me, Leonard Skinner came from here is part of the reason it sounds like Leonard

1:03:31 Skinner did there, you know, and a bunch of dudes.

1:03:34 I don't care what you think every dude you sing sweet home, Alabama at a Jags game and

1:03:38 people worship.

1:03:39 They do.

1:03:40 They lift their hands.

1:03:41 They sing the words.

1:03:42 They get into it.

1:03:43 All right.

1:03:44 But what it is, it's not an excuse to lift your personal preferences up to the point where

1:03:47 you look at God and go, I'm not doing that.

1:03:49 So imagine this.

1:03:50 Okay.

1:03:51 Imagine you are, it's, it's 31 AD and you are on your way to the day of atonement walking

1:03:57 up the southern steps and Gamaliel begins leading a song of ascent from the song.

1:04:04 And I look at you.

1:04:05 I'm like, Kyle, aren't you singing?

1:04:06 And you're like, I don't like this one.

1:04:09 Gamaliel would kick your butt, dude.

1:04:11 And this, this worship is prescription.

1:04:14 So don't fall into the thing like everything I don't like is description, everything I'm

1:04:18 okay with is prescription.

1:04:19 And so what I would push you on is don't be a white belt worshiper.

1:04:24 Like there is advanced.

1:04:25 Of course.

1:04:26 I think all of, I spent a whole, I have a chapter talking about how church looks like

1:04:30 a blouse.

1:04:31 Well, don't make the music sound like a blouse only.

1:04:33 Now there needs to be girls songs in there too.

1:04:35 No problem.

1:04:37 And we need to be, it is no problem for us to talk about the bosom of Jesus.

1:04:40 John wrote that.

1:04:41 He also got boiled and wouldn't go down.

1:04:43 He's a mainly man.

1:04:44 So we can be intimate and sincere and tender with our Lord and Savior in Jesus Christ and

1:04:49 walk tenderly in the garden.

1:04:50 That's fine too.

1:04:52 And I'm not saying that that no matter what the church puts out, it's all holy and righteous

1:04:56 and God's into it.

1:04:57 Okay.

1:04:58 For sure.

1:04:59 But what we can do is abdicate the God's command for men to lift hands in the sanctuary.

1:05:06 Like that is a thing that worship in the Old Testament and New Testament was a full body

1:05:10 posture, full, full sport kind of contact event.

1:05:15 Well, so let's, let's talk more specifically about, because I'll get guys that'll email

1:05:20 me like, yeah, I agree with you entirely.

1:05:22 And then guys are like, no, I don't agree for whatever reason.

1:05:24 Okay.

1:05:25 But you said before, like you talk about like dead churches where you walk in places and

1:05:29 the worship's like dead and different things like that.

1:05:31 It's hard to compare to what's going on here.

1:05:33 But if you were to come to my church and Evan Oklahoma, Faith Bible, and you were to stand

1:05:36 up at the very, very tippy top and there's, you know, just under a thousand people or

1:05:40 so at any one of our three services on Sunday mornings and you were to look out.

1:05:45 You might see one or two people with their hands raised during worship and the worship

1:05:49 of these are non-professionals like these are, these are volunteers.

1:05:52 They're doing their absolute level best.

1:05:54 And you might think to yourself, if you use raised hands as fruit, right, you're going

1:06:01 to be in the John MacArthur campus, there's no fruit near that sweet enough.

1:06:04 And you know, you would be looking out there and you would be concerned because some people

1:06:08 come from traditions that don't really have that.

1:06:10 I was at a church Christ setting, Oh, WFR where Al Robertson preaches big church Christ

1:06:16 down there in Monroe, and there's six people on stage and they're singing parts.

1:06:22 And so your voice as a woman or a man is represented in the part of the song.

1:06:27 And it was very powerful.

1:06:28 And of course, it's a cappella because, you know, who cares about what the Bible says

1:06:31 and like, you know, all those, all those things.

1:06:33 No problem.

1:06:34 But at the same time, like I think there are guys that are like, it's the same thing whenever

1:06:38 I did the episode about contemporary Christian music is for women and effeminate men.

1:06:43 And we're like, I've been thinking I was broken this entire time, but maybe it's not, maybe

1:06:47 it's not just me.

1:06:48 Maybe it's part of what I'm being fed.

1:06:50 I don't disagree with your assessment of the majority of churches and the music they're

1:06:55 putting out there.

1:06:57 What I want to do though is not settle at white belt worship.

1:07:01 So what do you mean by like white belt worship?

1:07:03 You just come in and do the things that you like to do and think you're doing jiu-jitsu.

1:07:07 Like when you came in, you submitted yourself to a professor and he said, okay, neat, you

1:07:11 know how to do take downs, okay, great, because you had some wrestling background.

1:07:15 Cool.

1:07:16 Now what?

1:07:17 Can I please show you like there's a whole world out there?

1:07:19 Let me show you guard.

1:07:20 Correct.

1:07:21 And then you, and he just kind of kept going and kept going and kept going.

1:07:24 So if I was at your church, I don't know your church, there's no way in the world I'm throwing

1:07:28 shade on your church.

1:07:29 I met your pastor one time.

1:07:30 He's awesome.

1:07:31 If I wrote a book to leaders in the church to talk to them about worship, I would lean

1:07:35 really hard on a bunch of things that they need to make sure that they are biblical in,

1:07:40 you know, not just carrying on some tradition that might not even be steeped in the scriptures.

1:07:44 I'm just trying to bring us back to what the scriptures say.

1:07:48 Beginning to end, body posture, passion, truth, these aren't either ores.

1:07:55 These are all included together when we worship God.

1:07:58 What I don't want you to do, and I mean you personally, Kyle, sometimes you have thought

1:08:06 through some things and you've got a line of reasoning and even thoughts.

1:08:10 And it's kind of like that little game when your kids were little and they'd pull the

1:08:14 string and it's like, the cow says, and I can go worship and you're like, well, we've

1:08:18 got this effeminate and in the key, the only man can sing.

1:08:21 And you've got your thing.

1:08:22 Yeah.

1:08:23 I'm like, okay, that's adorable.

1:08:24 Now, where is God pushing you in your regular corporate worship activity?

1:08:31 Because it is a prescription for the growing Christian.

1:08:34 And I want to be growing in this too, you know.

1:08:37 Now in our church, we teach on it a lot.

1:08:41 So why I'm trying to take these excuses away when you're about to get into a full on worship

1:08:45 time.

1:08:46 This comes out.

1:08:47 You guys will be several weeks into worship as a war.

1:08:48 It's the part of it.

1:08:50 Part of the misteaching about worship is people have only talked about worship as an affectionate

1:08:54 response to a God that loves him.

1:08:56 And it's fair to say that worship isn't just music 1000 right?

1:08:59 So 1000.

1:09:00 Then castigated for talking about that worship as being kind of a wider thing.

1:09:05 But if you listen very closely to our people that we call worship leaders and I don't want

1:09:10 to get like a semantic Jesus, Duke, but we pay very close attention.

1:09:14 People say, like, thanks for worshiping with us in song.

1:09:16 Now open your Bibles.

1:09:17 We're going to worship in word.

1:09:18 We try to make sure we say that we talk about worship at work and all those kinds of things.

1:09:23 But yeah, when I'm talking about the singing, one of the things to pastor, if there's passengers

1:09:27 listening, man, you get what you teach.

1:09:30 And so if you have not taught your people what the Bible says, but you've just lifted

1:09:33 up a tradition or your personal preferences, shame on you.

1:09:37 But what I don't want to do is I don't want any of your guys to have an excuse to not

1:09:42 push themselves in every area of discipleship, you know.

1:09:47 Well, so, so let me ask you this, because you and I've talked about this because I didn't

1:09:51 grow up in church.

1:09:52 I didn't grow up around Christian music.

1:09:54 Like I was a metal head and then I was saved in a Baptist church and I'm like, what is

1:09:58 this?

1:09:59 This is too much organ, not enough, not enough break down here, but yeah.

1:10:04 In the moments when I've been call, whatever you want, I don't really care poetic language

1:10:08 you use.

1:10:09 But like when I was overwhelmed by the spirit, like, I mean, I text you one morning when

1:10:14 I was like getting ready and I was listening to sing along by a frickin Phil Wickham and

1:10:18 I couldn't even get a line out of a song without choking up, right?

1:10:22 But I've been at metal shows, Christian metal shows for today and O sleeper and I've been

1:10:29 listening to Christian hip hop and I've been by myself and having experiences that don't

1:10:37 even look vaguely like anything I've experienced in corporate worship because from the moment

1:10:42 I became a Christian in 10th grade, corporate worship was just strange to me.

1:10:45 It just, it's something was strange about it.

1:10:47 I never decided that I was going to not participate.

1:10:49 But I was like, what is just weird for whatever reason?

1:10:53 Unless it's the same level of maturity I was showing as a 15 year old, maybe there's something

1:10:57 else to it.

1:10:58 But there are a lot of guys that you're speaking to right now that they find God when they're

1:11:02 listening to, you know, convictions or reformed or one of those metal bands.

1:11:07 And then when they go to church, they're like, ah, am I broken like, it's not either or it's

1:11:11 both thing.

1:11:12 Okay.

1:11:13 So you definitely need those private times of worship in what and that you and I've raised

1:11:15 my hands in private worship at my desk in my studio and that is a place where your personal

1:11:21 preference are the lead foot because it's just you and Jesus.

1:11:23 Yeah, I get to play it.

1:11:24 I get to play a list.

1:11:25 Yeah.

1:11:26 And I will also say your church may not be offering everything to every single person

1:11:31 there.

1:11:32 Okay.

1:11:33 But then then it becomes incumbent upon you to figure out I need a regular practice of

1:11:41 worship, not just me and Jesus, but corporately, whatever that looks like.

1:11:45 Yeah.

1:11:46 And I would think with a heavy dose of singing, like a, you know, like a affections, attention

1:11:51 towards the Lord, maybe that, you know, maybe a poem or maybe a spoken word does that.

1:11:57 But there's something different about music.

1:11:59 Okay.

1:12:00 So if you're a church, it's just kind of, it's a little milk toast and it's whatever.

1:12:04 Okay.

1:12:05 Then maybe at fight club or maybe at the forging table or maybe there's some, like what is

1:12:10 your regular practice in your own Christian discipline where brothers are lifting their

1:12:17 hands to God, or posturing themselves, lifting their voice to say it's about you, it's not

1:12:22 me.

1:12:23 So in your particular case, you might have to add to a boys, this is going to be the,

1:12:29 the basis, how great thou art you've ever heard or I want y'all to hear this song.

1:12:35 Hear the words.

1:12:36 I printed out because nobody can understand them, but you cause it's like, but you know,

1:12:40 you might have future in this.

1:12:41 Here's the words that matter.

1:12:42 We're going to listen.

1:12:43 We're going to worship God together in this because there's this one area of my life.

1:12:48 It's like if, dude, if you went to the gym and they never talk anything leg locks, you

1:12:54 can get crushed.

1:12:55 We go to a tournament.

1:12:56 Yeah.

1:12:57 So you'd be like, okay, well, I love my gym for all these reasons.

1:12:59 I'm not leaving my gym, but I'm going to have to supplement a little bit.

1:13:02 And I'm going to have to learn some like leg locks and ankle holes and knee bars over here.

1:13:06 You might have to do a little bit of that in your own worship life as a disciple.

1:13:11 And then if you're going to lead it, cause you lead a lot of things, okay, then elevate

1:13:14 your personal preference again.

1:13:15 I don't think that's a problem.

1:13:17 Can you give me a guttural metal yell again?

1:13:19 You got something?

1:13:20 No, no, no.

1:13:21 You got it right.

1:13:22 That's pretty good.

1:13:23 That's pretty good.

1:13:24 I can feel the movement of the spirit here in this, uh, but then also there's a bunch of

1:13:27 other things you've turned me on to that are really good.

1:13:29 Like, uh, the altar music, you know, there's some, there's some other places, but, but corporate

1:13:35 worship matters.

1:13:36 Now, I still have a bone to pick here because a couple of years ago when I introduced you

1:13:40 to the altar, I made a demand.

1:13:43 It may have sounded like a polite suggestion, but I demanded it and it hasn't happened yet.

1:13:47 I don't remember what I'm saying.

1:13:48 I've not seen a banjo on that stage out there since I've been here, Joe, be more we're working

1:13:52 on a fiddle.

1:13:53 What do you mean?

1:13:54 Working on a fiddle?

1:13:55 Just invite someone that plays a fiddle.

1:13:56 That's what we're.

1:13:57 Call a guy.

1:13:58 That's what we're doing.

1:13:59 You got your phone.

1:14:00 Call the fiddle guy.

1:14:01 We like to have Christians lead.

1:14:02 So we're going to, we're trying to hunt that person.

1:14:03 We need more banjo.

1:14:04 I'm pro-banjo.

1:14:05 Where is it?

1:14:06 We've had it.

1:14:07 You all have banjos in Jacksonville?

1:14:08 You're too good for banjos?

1:14:09 Yes, we're not.

1:14:10 You're, you're, you're preaching to the choir, brother.

1:14:13 Okay.

1:14:14 Well, land in.

1:14:15 Can you call the banjo guy?

1:14:16 Can you get landed?

1:14:17 Come out here.

1:14:18 Land is a drummer.

1:14:19 He's probably a play banjo.

1:14:20 Land it.

1:14:21 Can you play banjo?

1:14:22 No way.

1:14:23 Can you come out here and like demonstrate banjo?

1:14:24 Landing can do everything.

1:14:25 Land, I can't hear you.

1:14:26 You're going to have to get come closer.

1:14:27 You can probably start learning now and have it ready by the weekend.

1:14:29 Fine.

1:14:30 Yeah.

1:14:31 He's like smarty pants guy.

1:14:32 Well, we'll end up making this last question again guys, the name of the book, stand firm

1:14:35 and act like man by Joby Martin and Charles Martin, no relation, but I'll just read this

1:14:40 last quote.

1:14:41 It's actually from chapter three.

1:14:42 So it's appropriate because chapter three is titled stand firm, a great question to ask

1:14:47 yourself in your fight against the enemy is this, if I were the devil, how would I fight

1:14:51 against me?

1:14:52 So in this context, let's get real practical.

1:14:56 Almost everyone listening to this has been in some sort of a sports context in their

1:15:00 life.

1:15:01 It's ball, football, wrestling, whatever your thing is.

1:15:05 You don't just scheme for what you're good at.

1:15:08 You scheme for what the other team is not good at and good at and you're thinking like

1:15:14 the head coach of the other team.

1:15:16 If I were the head coach of that team over there, we're in a different color Jersey,

1:15:21 how would I attack my defense, right?

1:15:23 That's what a defensive coordinator gets paid to do, right?

1:15:27 What defensive schemes am I going to need to shut down the triple option or whatever

1:15:30 the thing your team's running, okay?

1:15:34 Men don't think about that as it pertains to the devil and then they're shocked, right?

1:15:40 So I text Matt Chandler the other day because something I saw a video like algorithm, right?

1:15:46 Because algorithms are just neutral and there's definitely no demonic influences there.

1:15:49 And I just flipped to this video.

1:15:51 And it was like a finger in my chest about something that I'm incredibly insecure about.

1:15:57 Right, poking, poking, poking.

1:16:00 And what do I do?

1:16:01 I put my phone down.

1:16:02 I text him.

1:16:03 I text you.

1:16:04 And I didn't even send you all the link.

1:16:05 But I was like, I just recognize this as a demonic attack.

1:16:09 This is an attack on my pride.

1:16:11 It's an attack on my future.

1:16:13 And this is Satan because the thing is the Satan's not putting together Normandy every

1:16:18 day.

1:16:19 Sometimes it's just a thought.

1:16:20 The kid that killed Charlie Kirk, don't you think that just started with a thought?

1:16:24 Hey, I bet I bet you could shoot Charlie Kirk, the dirty war campaign of the month, right?

1:16:29 It just starts with a whisper and then the whispers get louder and then Satan's like,

1:16:33 because he's not omniscient.

1:16:34 He doesn't know what you're going to do.

1:16:35 He's like, let me just throw a bunch of hooks in the water and see which one's Oh, I just

1:16:39 hooked him.

1:16:40 That's it.

1:16:41 He's paying attention.

1:16:42 Okay, let me give him a little bit more porn in his algorithm.

1:16:44 Hey, just let me give him a little bit more money because he seems to be pulling towards

1:16:47 things that are into more money.

1:16:48 Hey, let me let him linger a little longer at the office with his assistant.

1:16:52 Hey, let me let me give him a little bit more influence in this area of his life.

1:16:55 That's going to take him away from the influence that he could be sharing in the sage wisdom

1:16:58 that he could be giving away in the church.

1:17:00 We don't think about this like a war.

1:17:02 So this is where we'll end it.

1:17:03 Give us some more on that.

1:17:04 Hey, I'm going to send you this.

1:17:05 One of our youth pastors, Ryan Sweatt came out with this and he did it on a mission trip

1:17:09 with a bunch of our student leaders and you can use chat GBT for something really cool.

1:17:15 I'll send you the prompts.

1:17:17 If you're into it, maybe you can share it with everybody like the actual things.

1:17:21 Okay.

1:17:22 There's a bunch of questions about who you are and what you love and what your goals

1:17:24 are and what your temptations are.

1:17:25 And the more honest, the better.

1:17:27 Okay.

1:17:28 And you write all this stuff.

1:17:29 Right.

1:17:30 Like I've been married to the rest of 25 years.

1:17:31 I'm just dad.

1:17:32 I'm this is what I do.

1:17:33 Here's what I struggle with.

1:17:34 Here's what I love.

1:17:35 Here's my goals, my aspirations.

1:17:36 And at the end of it, you go write me a screw tape letter.

1:17:40 Oh, and it goes my boy, Ryan Sweatt is reading it at a at a Chick-fil-A in Texas or whatever.

1:17:49 He's flying back from some speaking event.

1:17:51 He's a really good preacher.

1:17:52 And he's a American setting possible.

1:17:55 Alling his face off because this thing, it's reading you.

1:17:59 It says things like, uh, help him build influence and think he's stepping into his calling.

1:18:07 Things like that.

1:18:08 And, and, and it knows see us, Lewis, it knows it.

1:18:11 We're going to, I haven't done yet.

1:18:13 I plan to do it.

1:18:14 We're going to walk our staff through it.

1:18:15 This is even deeper than like, write yourself a screw tape or have chat GBT.

1:18:21 Tell it all the things and tell it what you actually.

1:18:23 Nobody needs to read it.

1:18:24 This is what you and for you.

1:18:25 Yeah.

1:18:26 Don't lie to it.

1:18:27 It'll help you a ton.

1:18:28 And then, and then what you did, like with me and Matt, what I've done with elders and

1:18:31 my Matt carriers invite some other brothers into that conversation and say, hey, I need

1:18:37 you to be guardrails in these areas.

1:18:39 And then everybody should be a Pharisee about something.

1:18:43 There's some things in my life I'm a legalist about just because I know my past.

1:18:46 I know where I'm at.

1:18:47 I know where, where I want to end up one day.

1:18:49 So I don't even get close to those things or against it.

1:18:54 War against it.

1:18:55 And you and I have talked a lot about foxholes and Mac carriers and King's tables and band

1:18:59 of brothers and all that.

1:19:00 And that's all something that undergirds us as well.

1:19:02 But we'll give you the last word to the man or to the woman that buys because, you know,

1:19:07 it's mostly women that buy men's Christian books and they give it to all the men in their

1:19:10 life.

1:19:11 So shout out to all the five percent.

1:19:12 I'm gonna start calling the five percent.

1:19:13 I like it.

1:19:14 Well, the women need to read it too, because you know a man, you love a man, you're trying

1:19:17 to raise a man.

1:19:18 And you need to understand that man as well.

1:19:19 He'll help you understand the perspective of a man.

1:19:21 But what do you hope readers get out of this from an actionable standpoint?

1:19:25 Ultimately, I hope, man, first and foremost, if you've never bowed your knee to King Jesus,

1:19:29 that first and foremost you would, and then you would walk in the courage and power that

1:19:33 he puts in you to be the man he's called you to be.

1:19:37 And that's what we're all here for.

1:19:39 That's all for me.

1:19:40 Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?

1:19:41 Thanks for your ministry.

1:19:42 I mean, this is we're partnering honestly, like never before, specific to men.

1:19:46 So our brother.

1:19:47 Yep.

1:19:48 Thank you for listening to this podcast.

1:19:49 Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five

1:19:52 star review.

1:19:53 If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email

1:19:56 to info@undonton.life.

1:19:59 That's I-N-F-O @undonton.life.

1:20:01 Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,

1:20:04 including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.

1:20:07 Just go to www.undonton.life.

1:20:09 And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for

1:20:13 our content.

1:20:14 The music on this podcast is their song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut album

1:20:18 on Face Down Records.

1:20:19 The links are in the description.

1:20:21 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.

1:20:23 Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.

1:20:30 Keep seeking the lion of Judah.

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